RETRO HOT PICKS! | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Apr17

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1990!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Apr 17, 2024

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1990!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 34 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of April 17, 1990. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of April 10, 1973. Click here to check it out. (Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are technically the comics that went on sale between April 14 and April 20.) — So, let’s set the scene: Baseball non-Hall of Famer Pete Rose fell further into disgrace April 20 when he pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges. Three months later, he would be sentenced to prison. He’d already been banned from baseball by this time and remains on the outside looking in at Cooperstown. He is still baseball’s all-time leader in hits. The high-flying ’80s were over and it was time to pay the tab. Junk-bond king Michael Milken — one of the inspirations for Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko — pleaded guilty April 14 to fraud-related charges. He agreed to pay $600 million in fines and restitution and was later sentenced to 10 years in jail. (He served just under two years for cooperating against his former colleagues and for good behavior.) Earlier in the month, Ivan Boesky, another dirty trader who inspired Gekko and who informed on Milken, was released from federal custody. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the top-performing movie at the box office. Other movies in theaters included The Hunt for Red October, starring Sean Connery, and Pretty Woman, the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold rom-com that made Julia Roberts, who’d previously been nominated for an Oscar for Steel Magnolias, a superstar. Hits on TV included America’s Funniest Home Videos, Cheers, A Different World, The Cosby Show and Roseanne. But David Lynch cultists and connoisseurs of fine television were already obsessed with Twin Peaks, which debuted April 8. There was nothing else like it on TV and that first season remains a highlight of Lynch’s illustrious career. Kyle MacLachlan was hilariously weird as pie-and-coffee-loving FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. In response to Saturday Night Live’s well-earned reputation as a mostly white sketch show, In Living Color premiered April 15 on Fox and became a cultural force. Created by Keenen Ivory Wayans, it made stars of siblings Damon, Kim, Shawn and Marlon, and turned...

Apr10

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1973!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Apr 10, 2024

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1973!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 51 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott Tipton and I are selecting comics that came out the week of April 10, 1973. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of April 3, 1969. Click here to check it out. (Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are technically the comics that went on sale between April 7 and April 13.) — So, let’s set the scene: All the President’s Men were cracking. On April 6, White House counsel John Dean began cooperating with Watergate prosecutors, and on April 9, The New York Times reported that Watergate burglar James McCord told the Senate Watergate Committee that the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) had made cash payoffs to the men who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. (By the end of the month, the scandal would intensify substantially with the resignations of Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, key aide John Ehrlichman, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, Acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray and political operative/Commerce Dept. official Jeb Stuart Magruder, and the firing of Dean.) New Yorkers enjoyed their new skyline: The World Trade Center had just officially opened April 4 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. At the time, they were the two tallest buildings in the world, 110 stories and 1,350 feet high. An artist to the very end: On April 8, one of the absolute giants of the arts, Pablo Picasso, died of heart failure at his home in France. Among the the most storied and celebrated artists in the annals of human history, Picasso and his wife had friends over for dinner the previous evening before Picasso went to his home studio to work on a painting, then went to bed in the early morning hours. He had been scheduled to bring new works to a showing. (Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.) On April 10, the Kansas City Royals opened their beautiful new ballpark, Royals Stadium, with a 12-1 defeat of the Texas Rangers. The stadium, once an almost pastoral place to see a baseball game, has since been “refurbished” to within an inch of its charm and is now scheduled to be replaced. A shame. If you were headed to the movies, my goodness did you have a...

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